The 25th anniversary of the open-border Schengen agreement is set to take place this year as most European Union member states have closed their borders due to the Wuhan coronavirus.

The Schengen open borders agreement was signed by Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, and Portugal on the 26th of March, 1995, and was long touted as a success of the European Union. But few are celebrating open borders, as coronavirus spreads throughout Europe, as Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung notes in their coverage of the virus in central Europe.

The agreement expanded to more countries after 1995, including Greece in 2000 and Denmark, Sweden, and Finland in 2001. The agreement now encompasses 26 countries, some of which, such as Switzerland and Iceland, are not members of the European Union.

The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic is not the first time the Schengen agreement has seen major challenges.

EU Dismisses Coronavirus Threat, Refuses to Consider Border Control As Virus Spreads Across Europe https://t.co/izKTHgrtm9

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 26, 2020

In 2015 during the height of the migrant crisis and the 20th anniversary year of Schengen, many countries imposed border checks such as Denmark, which continued to impose strict border policies, citing dangers from Swedish gang crime and terror threats as recently as last year.

Since the arrival of coronavirus in Italy and then in other European Union countries like Germany, France, Spain, and Austria, 15 Schengen members have introduced strict border controls to help stop the spread of the virus.

According to the website Schengenvisainfo, an independent website for information on Schengen zone visas, Belgium, Iceland, Sweden, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg are the only Schengen members not to have closed their borders so far.

EU President Calls for Borders to Remain Open During Coronavirus Outbreak https://t.co/l8nhtj8TNs

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 16, 2020

Several of the countries that have closed their borders have also failed to inform the European Commission of their move to secure their borders, a move that is contrary to the Schengen Border Code.

The European Commission itself stated in late February that it was not considering the suspension of Schengen when Italy led infections with 322 confirmed cases.

Figures released Monday revealed Italy to now have nearly 64,000 cases and 6,077 deaths, nearly double the number of fatal cases reported by China where the outbreak began.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

On top of the legion of coronavirus lies the establishment media have deliberately spread, another massive disconnect is that our media elite are entirely immune from the economic devastation that comes with shutting down our economy.

This is a problem.

This is a big problem.

And as President Trump begins to talk about reopening the economy, it is going to become an even bigger problem.

Let me tell you a dirty, little secret about those of us who work in the media… The Chinese Virus is an AMAZING story. No one is taking death or sickness lightly. I’m certainly not, especially with a wife I adore right in the danger zone. I’m holed up; I’m disinfecting the mail with Clorox wipes, my hands are chapped from washing… Nevertheless…

This is a helluva story.

We’re living through a disaster movie. Turn on your TV and it’s all there… Death counts! Contagion counts! The president is on TV every day! Hole up! Stay home! Unemployment could hit 30 percent! A second Great Depression! Tell us how bad things will get, Mr. Expert! Drama! Drama! Drama!

And best of all — and this is important — beneath all the hysteria, beneath all the panic, beneath all the drama, we’re pretty sure we’re going to be okay, because according to the worst predictions, 99 out of 100 of us will survive.

And then there’s the other dirty, little secret…

Financially we’re not being hurt by this. Quite the opposite, in fact. We work in the business of news, and business is good. Business is as good as it’s ever going to get, and … most of us work from home. Or we work in a hermetically sealed radio or TV studio.

How great is that!

Our beautiful and privileged lives are in no way negatively affected by the coronavirus. We get to live and work through an exciting disaster movie knowing we’re going to survive, our jobs are secure, and our employers are thriving because clickety-click-click-click!

And that is a huge, huge problem when it comes to covering this story.

How can those of us who are so privileged even begin to relate to the 99.99 percent of us who are not?

Do you have any idea how easy it is for me to say, “But if this economic shutdown saves just one life!”

It’s insanely easy.

Because I’m living through an exciting disaster movie without my economic life being disrupted, that  gives me the unique privilege of being able to sound virtuous without the target of my virtue having a negative effect on my livelihood.

It’s even a bit selfish… As I said, this is one helluva story.

But there is another story… Another disaster movie… The one about an unstoppable financial meteor that’s about to hit 99.99 percent of our country.

The government shut down Margaret’s company.

Margaret can’t pay her invoices to Jimmy’s company.

Jimmy’s company can’t pay Jimmy.

Jimmy can’t pay his landlord.

Jimmy’s landlord can’t pay his mortgage.

Jimmy and his landlord are now sitting at home totally helpless as they watch their bank accounts and 401Ks melt away along with the supplies necessary to feed their wife and children.

And ’round and ’round we go.

So please allow me to put this starkly as I can…

No, the government is not asking us to just sit at home and watch Netflix.

That’s a bullshit media talking point from a bullshit media living through an exciting disaster movie.

What the government is really doing is this…

Asking us to sit at home as our bank accounts dwindle, as our small businesses barrel towards bankruptcy, as the company that employs us teeters on the edge of closing down.

And sitting at home helpless as everything falls apart is agonizing… Is a recipe for despair… And despair means stress, and stress is — for the those of you who thump your chest over your fidelity to science — a killer.

The privileged media living through their exciting disaster movie don’t want to talk about the economic death toll of shutting down the economy — suicide; drug overdoses; crime; murders driven by despair, desperation, and fear; spousal abuse.

Let’s just start here…

In 2018, 48,344 Americans committed suicide.

During the first four years of the Great Depression, the suicide rate jumped by almost 25 percent.

There’s another death toll in this story, another disaster movie… But just as our useless and corrupt media are immune from illegal aliens stealing other people’s jobs, just as our useless and corrupt media cannot relate to weather disasters until those disasters happen in New York or Washington, DC, they are immunized from this death toll…

That’s a problem.

I’m not saying I know the answer to the dilemma between the coronavirus meteor and the economic meteor. But I am at least willing to acknowledge the latter exists, and to not sanctimoniously scream YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT DEAD PEOPLE to those who dare to discuss that other disaster movie.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

What if we’re wrong about COVID-19?

We’ve been wrong before in underestimating it. If we’re wrong in overestimating it, would that make any difference?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has generally acquitted himself well during the outbreak, but this one line of explanation for his virtual shutdown of his state drew a bit of attention: “This is about saving lives and if everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.”

If this was all about saving just one life, would that justify tanking the stock market? Costing millions of jobs? Bankrupting scores of businesses?

We know, of course, this isn’t about one life.

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However, we don’t know how many lives we’re saving.

We also don’t know what the fatality rate of COVID-19 is yet — and one Stanford University School of Medicine professor says we might have that last part massively wrong.

In a piece published last week in STAT, John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and of epidemiology and population health, argued that data collected from the Diamond Princess cruise ship could mean the World Health Organization’s predicted COVID-19 fatality rate is way off base.

“The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco,” he wrote.

He noted that short-term lockdown measures might be tolerable to people, but that long-term ones would be difficult to swallow. This is especially true when you consider the fact that there’s a debate over how reliable the data we have actually is.

“The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed,” Ioannidis wrote.

“We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.”

“This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.”

That 3.4 percent figure comes from remarks by the WHO’s director-general on March 3, when he said the coronavirus “causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza.

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“While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, COVID-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity. That means more people are susceptible to infection, and some will suffer severe disease,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected.”

However, Ioannidis pointed out that “[t]he one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers.

“The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher,” he added.

“Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%),” Ioannidis continued.

“It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.”

That’s obviously a huge range — and it’s not close to 3.4 percent.

Now, granted, the Diamond Princess was a unique situation. It’s impossible to extrapolate that to an entire population.

However, given how unreliable much of the data is when it comes to COVID-19, the Diamond Princess data is not something we should ignore.

Now, none of this is to say you shouldn’t take the coronavirus seriously. You should.

If images of spring breakers partying it up on the Floridian littoral weren’t enough to raise your blood pressure, you were either one of these misguided youths or you’ve simply lost all faith in humanity at this point.

Stay inside as much as possible. Wash your hands. Pay attention to the authorities.

However, if you’re one of the people for whom the exclamation “science!” is a frequent peroration, you should probably be more concerned about whether the global death rate for COVID-19 is closest to Italy’s (more than 9 percent as of Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University), the United States’ (under 1 percent) or the Diamond Princess’.

And yet, these people seem to take their cues from the media in terms of dealing with the coronavirus. Ioannidis’ analysis should be great news for the media — and yet, I haven’t seen him discussing it on CNN.

These numbers have huge implications.

After all, given the Diamond Princess data, the mortality rate that the WHO predicted could be 27 times too high. Even going five times higher than Ioannidis’ 0.125 percent figure only gives us 0.625 percent, which would make the WHO’s predictions five times too high.

This doesn’t mean the WHO isn’t right, but it’s an encouraging piece of news nonetheless.

Getting this right is doubly important when you realize the interruption to daily life that the coronavirus is causing.

“One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue,” Ioannidis wrote.

“Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

“If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe,” he concluded.

One only hopes we get it.

We can’t all afford to be Gov. Cuomos forever, after all.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Do you agree with Sen. Cruz?

A Florida man says he took a chance at the brink of death and it saved his life.

After being diagnosed with pneumonia and COVID-19, Rio Giardinieri, a 52-year-old manufacturing executive, said he went through living hell, according to KTTV.

Giardinieri said the illness threw his body into a tailspin with nine days of searing back pain. For a week, he said he was isolated in the ICU, where, though placed on oxygen, he could still hardly breathe.

Last Friday night, he said found himself on his deathbed and out of options when doctors gave him the grim news that there was nothing more they could do.

Giardinieri set to calling friends and family, telling them he would not make it. Hardest of all, he said his goodbyes to his wife and their three children.

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And then a friend forwarded him an article about an old and well-known anti-malarial drug — hydroxychloroquine — that saw promising results in a study in France.

Giardinieri said he then contacted an infectious disease doctor.

“He gave me all the reasons why I would probably not want to try it because there are no trials, there’s no testing, it was not something that was approved,” Giardinieri explained.

But after explaining that he didn’t have much time left, Giardinieri said the doctor approved the drug for him and a nurse administered it 30 minutes later.

Just an hour after being placed on the medication by IV, he said his body reacted strongly, and by morning, he had no symptoms.

Giardinieri said he has since been issued several more doses and doctors hope to release him once the illness has left his system and he can no longer infect others.

“To me, there was no doubt in mind that I wouldn’t make it until morning,” Giardinieri said. “So to me the drug saved my life.”

So should these supposed “wonder” drugs or combinations thereof be issued to the general public to fight COVID-19? In short, it’s complicated.

Matthew Herper writing for STAT breaks down the responses favored by President Donald Trump and the medical team around him.

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“In an emergency, like the exploding pandemic of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19,” Herper asked, “how much data should doctors require before they use a medicine?”

“[A French] study doesn’t show that patients lived longer or were more likely to recover, but instead shows that the amount of virus in the blood was reduced much faster in the patients who took hydroxychloroquine and even faster in the six patients who took the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin,” Herper wrote.

“That result is encouraging, but for patients who are not gravely ill, it doesn’t tell how to weigh the side effects of hydroxychloroquine against the potential benefits.”

Obviously, no healer wants to prescribe cures that will make already suffering patients sicker.

For patients that are on death’s door, it could make sense to offer them the option of using these drugs that have not been fully vetted as cures for COVID-19.

But it also makes sense for doctors to give patients with moderate symptoms the choice to take the drug and become part of a voluntary force to more quickly determine patient outcomes.

If this fight against the virus really is a war, a battlefield mindset could be better suited than a boardroom one.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.